Wiser folk know Y’s just a crooked letter

One of the more unlikely tasks I have been called upon to perform in my daily toil is to write about mature-age workers.

“Why me?" I asked. “What would I know about mature-age workers?"

But as the 30-something who sits beside me explained, in a suspiciously soothing manner, I was given the job because I have such empathy with all groups. I like that explanation so I’m sticking to it, but the incident made me think about labels.

Never mind the Gen X and Gen Y categories, which I could never get straight anyway, where are the labels for those consumers who may have passed the first blush of youth, or given up on their toy boy image – okay, who started work when ABBA was still in the charts, people talked about glam rock without laughing and stories were written on typewriters?

Such a person, if he exists, and I am not admitting anything, is right at the tail of the so-called baby boomers which, in any case, is too broad a category. Those now emerging from the universities seem to be relabelled with a different letter every 10 years, but where are the fancy letters for the more mature?

Those blessed with wisdom thanks to a few extra years may be described as, say, Advanced Middle Aged, or AGMers. But the problem is that age limits for this category would have to be specified, as they are with Gen Y or Gen Z, or whatever other label marketing people dream up.

So are AGMers 45 to 55? And what about those who fall just outside the wrong end of the range? What do we call them?

Perhaps a better approach is to leave the whole thing vague. In the same way we call the retirement years the golden years, perhaps in labelling those who remember the original ABBA (quickly, what are the lyrics for the song Dancing Queen?) we should just stick with phrases.

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So those who are much closer to retirement than their 21st birthday may now be in their “wisdom years" or are “blessed people". Those labels may need some work-shopping but you get the idea. Leave the counting to those who don’t mind what the numbers say. The label “mature age" is right out.

Once that is sorted, and going with the “blessed people" phrase for the sake of argument, we can have blessed people awards. Young people are always being given awards, or so it seems, such as young novelist of the year, or young business person of the year. Awards for youthful business entrepreneurs are not nearly as common as they used to be, mainly because one year’s youthful entrepreneur was often the next year’s young bankrupt of the year, but there are still all sorts of awards with youthful or young in the title.

No one wants to be old entrepreneur of the year or old novelist of the year, but what about blessed years citizen of the year? Direct, blunt people who may also be youthful will still insist on loudly translating the award title as the “old citizen of the year" but at least it doesn’t say that on the certificate, so there.

But then why are we bothering with labels at all?

Why should we care in the slightest what it says on anyone’s birth certificate.

If the book has merit, or the business is still solvent enough for the owner to get to the awards night, that should be our only concern.

In any case, why do we want to encourage young people over and above their elders and betters by giving them awards? Young people seem to me to be brash enough without further encouragement from awards, so they should go off and be young and, no, we don’t want details thank you very much. The people who really need the awards are those who have been buffeted by the cross winds of life.

Up until recently I had some dealing with each annual intake of trainees, and each intake got a little speech from me about life being full of hardship, humiliation, heartache, bitter disappointment and pain, all on low pay.

They will later thank me for this insight, I am sure, but my immediate reward ranged from a rolling of the eyes through to a chuckle. I was even invited to repeat it to those who hadn’t heard it. They would then ask, incredulously, whether I really do remember ABBA. Being in my wisdom years is hard.